Sponging

I was originally going to call this post "My Reculturification", and acknoweldge that this is both the best word to describe what I'm currently doing, and that it's completely made up.

However, I was discussing this very act with a friend and she referred to it as Sponging. As a hack journalist and admirer of words, I had no problem admitting that Sponging was the more accurate term.

You see, recently I've had both a lot of time on my hands and a renewed attention span. While writing hasn't come easily, I have been interested in augmenting my experiences with new culture I feel I've missed.

In the last couple of years, I've been so focussed on one type of media, the video game, that I ended up mostly shutting out all others. So right now I'm trying to absorb as many new experiences, thoughts and theories as I can lay my hands on.

And as an avid fan of movies, television and books, naturally my focus is there.

It's mostly an attempt to never use the phrase "nah, it's not my thing" ever again.

Which, consequently, means that some of the items on my list may seem out of place. It may be both surprising the movies I've not seen and books I've not read, or even that I've decided they're important enough to view.

But the point of this exercise is to expand my cultural knowledge in all directions, not just what others have deemed 'culturally significant'.

I'm trying, in effect, to remember every suggestion I ignored from friends and family previously and find inspiration for writing in new places.

So, with way too much introduction, here is the list of what I've watched and read in the last month. In future, I hope to continue to finish at least one book and one movie per week and keep track of it on this blog. I may also post my reading and watching lists (future consumption) later on.

Books:
- Slumdob Millionaire
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves
- Bloodletting and other miraculous cures
- The Nanny Diaries (don't judge me)
- Mother Night
- My Booky Wook (Russell Brand's autobiography)
- The Sirens of Titan
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Dreamseller (Brandon Novak's autobiography)

Movies:
- Raging Bull
- Taxi Driver
- American Movie
- Sneakers
- Tron
- Fletch
- Troll 2
- Annie Hall
- UHF
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Wall Street
- World's Greatest Dad
- A Few Good Men
- Bruno
- In The Loop
- Date Night

TV Shows:
- Top Chef Seasons 1-3

yes, you can now call this blog neglect

i realize it's been an inhumane amount of time that i've left this blog un-updated.

i apologize if anybody was still reading or subscribing through rss, it's been a busy and rough time.

after leaving my last job i took a bit of a break from writing but i've got a new project that is almost ready to start. it's not huge but will likely be the next place to find my writing online.

when it's ready, i'll put a link to it here.

in the meantime, you can follow me on twitter @jamesspeedy. (although i'm hoping to take over the abandoned @jdspeedy as soon as i get a go ahead from twitter, so if that link no longer works try that).

and maybe, after a while, i'll come back and re-invigorate this blog. i still love it, i just don't love love it right now and with my incredible excitement over doing some more writing now, it should only be a matter or time before this will be absolutely filthy with posts again. that just may not be tomorrow or the near future.

for now,

stay frosty,

JD

oh no! my littlebigplanet!

in all seriousness, this has got me feeling pretty cagey.

littlebigplanet has been delayed. and not a, 'the shipment was slow to canada' kind of delay where you wait one to three days to get a game they're already playing in the states or on illegally modded consoles.

it's delayed as in, you offended a giant portion of the world by including inflammatory passages from the q'ruan in the background music to your game.

that's right, in the background music to the first level of the third world (swinging safari) you can hear two selections from the religious book, something that muslims take as offensive.

according to Nsider's open letter to media molecule (producers' of littlebigplanet) via kotaku, they say that:

We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online update, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.

as someone who's not muslim, far be it for me to weigh in on whether or not they should be reprinted, all i can say, is that as a littlebigplanet beta tester, next week is going to be a long one.

i was planning on making a design document for a few levels that i would start on tuesday but, according to shacknews, i'll be waiting another week after that to finally get my hands on a full version.

i'm sure i'm not the only one who will be sweating the extra week's wait. i just gotta pray that eb doesn't pull their usual nonsense with getting in my pre-ordered games late once the edited disks get shipped.

sadly without sackboy,

JD

interesting...interesting

now i don't quite feel so bad for sucking at halo.

there's always a positive spin you can put on anything...

JD

properly implemented achivements= sales?

this is probably the most interesting video games study i've heard of in a long while. it's not just some slapdash gathering of sales charts that compares microsoft to sony to nintendo made games, trying to figure out if master chief could out arm wrestle mario.

no, this breaks down whether or not the proper implementation of achievement points in a game, that reward the player just enough for their hard earned time and money, and tries to discern how much that affects their sales.

in fact, the study, featured on gamespot, seems to link games where developers spent time and effort developing incremental rewards with over 30 achievements (or trophies, if the ps3 is your bag) with better game sales.

as a rampant consumer of video games I can honestly say that this is not only one of the smarter uses of bar graphs that i've seen used to take apart game sales metrics, but also the most interesting study period.

yes, we know more girls are playing games than ever before, and old people like the wii. but proper implementation of a reward system to foster a relationship with the user and encourage them to not only see all the different aspects to your game, but show them that you appreciate their time. wow. didn't see that coming til i pulled it off my google reader.

bloggin' and loggin',

JD

i don't even know what to think

so grand theft auto has been generally observed as a scapegoat for modern pontiffs of fear news (ie. 'video games are making our children kill/violent/eat human flesh, what can you do about it?').

just today i stumbled across this story on kotaku:

Grand Theft Auto Helps Preteen Save Family's Lives

???

well, that's certainly...good? i don't really know what to think about this one. i mean, great! she saved her families live potentially, but wtf? it's because of GTA? i thought kids weren't supposed to play that game?

maybe if she'd played burnout, she'd just be waiting for the car to reset on the road and reduced boost...

missin' the movies,

JD

downloadable games that don't suck

in the past, i've kind of ignored the downloadable games available to me with my three consoles, unless they're explicitly given to me for free and i test them for a couple days.

i played a couple capcom shooters (1942, wolf of the battlefield, the space one) and was left unimpressed. but recently there's been a spat of actually really good games that i find myself playing more than full disk titles. that is, until the next wave of killer games comes out; force unleashed, nhl 09, etc., etc.

here are a few i'm currently loving and a couple older ones that are great too:

bionic commando: rearmed (XBLA & PSN)


this one came out of left field for me because, admittedly, i'd barely played the NES original (read: never).

the swing mechanic (by which this title would succeed or epically fail) feels perfect and the combo of the incredibly inventive ways to kill the bosses, the upgradable and satisfyingly designed firepower with that perfect swinging makes for a game that feels like it could deserve a stand alone release.

this is a remake that doesn't feel like a remake (like all those frogger incarnations) and outdoes just about any other game on either psn or xbox live arcade right now. it's fun and has a free demo so check it out.

my only gripe= why is this not downloadable to PSP yet?

special note: pick up the PSN version if you have the option because it's much more fun to play with a proper d-pad and not the xbox's failed attempt

castle crashers (XBLA)


this nifty little game is barely out and the buzz around it is huge. it has one of the best multiplayer implementations out there in the arcade games and a tremendously addictive gameplay reminiscent of the old TMNT arcade games and double dragon style beat em ups.

the art style is wicked, there's cutesy blood and gore and really, most important of all, it's fun. it's not so challenging as to scare off new gamers (who don't love frustrating shoot em ups). it's just wacky and weird and violent and cool, it hits all my bases. i look forward to downloading the full version once i get together somewhat of a team to play through the full campaign with.

various boardgames and card games (XBLA)

the only ones i can truly recommend are UNO and carcassonne, and that's because they're fun, easy to pick up and great to play on live.

one thing to note, however, people are really talkative in the UNO rooms and to me, that's a good thing. if it's anything like when the game was available free on live back in last year, carcassonne is just full of people grinding out the 200 achievement points in complete silence. boring.

notable mentions

here are a few that might be worth your time, at least for a few seconds. they're not perfect and won't steal a ton of your time but they're cheap and quite fun, depending on how much you get in to them:

- geometry wars (1 or 2) (XBLA)
- super stardust HD (PSN)
- pain (PSN)
- soul calibur (XBLA)
- kirby's adventure (VC)

arcadin' and lovin' it,

JD

must read: todd levin's history of 'his' gaming

this guy...this guy.

i don't know how to even phrase this, but i'd have to say that it enters the shortlist for this year's 'media that seems to have been written expressly for me'.

this dude knows how to write, and has a confidence in admitting a personality that i have slightly less confidence in admitting closely resembles my own.

consoles i have known was a multi-part chronicle of todd levin's adolescence and early adulthood through the gaming consoles he has owned, from the radioshack pong clone forwards.

it's funny, scathing and incredibly self-deprecating and surely worthy of the short bursts of attention required to get through the entire thing.

please give it a shot, especially if you ever found yourself in the unique position of not caring about sports or school dances but not having enough attention to even fit in with the magic card playing or D&D nerds.

laughing my way to the poor house,

JD

now that everyone and their mom has 4.1...

playstation

playstation has released their version of gamercards. see exhibit a in the right column.

they've also pushed back home again, as of E3 this week, but supposedly it will be worth the wait (and from what i've heard, it's looking quite a bit better than the beta did).

more news

more stuff has been happening, though, than the release of another inconsequential status symbol...

the wedding is in like two weeks, and i'm totally stoked for it. actually, at this point, i just want to get there and get it done. i mean, i'm going to have a great time, it's just that this has been a long process and i can't wait to hit the finish line.

oh, and we moved again. the new place is sweet though, even though i've been relegated to the psp since all my consoles are still packed up and most of the apartment is in boxes.

e3

and speaking of changes, has anyone been kind of bored by this years' e3 announcements?

i mean, i know it's been tapering off for a couple years, but microsoft's biggest announcement was jumping on the gui redesign bandwagon (though i am a little excited for the fall update, but not at all for the 'avatars'), and sony really didn't have much to show.

all the games we saw were well known for a while, and i'm getting bored of nintendo announcing more and more casual games that i'll play for about a week. i mean, the wii motion plus looks neat, and 1:1 for the wii remote would be cool, but isn't this what the wii remote was supposed to be on launch?

2 years, and now they've built the perfect wiimote by plugging a chunk of plastic into the end?

yikes.

anywho, off to a fab thursday (i'm sure),

your partner in crime,

JD

i guess i'm the only one with ps3 firmware 2.40 now...

so this is an unofficial test drive as no one else seems to have the 2.40 firmware since it was recalled shortly after being released.

i downloaded it with no complications the morning of so here are my impressions.

to be completely honest, the list of things it can't do is as long as my arm, and if you're expecting xbox live level of usefulness and interactivity, prepare for disappointment.

short list of fails:

- no access to ps store in game
- can't stream music in game (but can play music on the console hard drive)
- can only play music in games that support it

they've also introduced an achievement trophy system. to put it bluntly, so far, it's completely safe to call it half-cocked.

i got ahold of a copy of super stardust hd (don't let anyone else tell you different, this is the only game that currently supports them) and not only is the sound kind of lame (nothing compared to the now classic xbox *bing*) but everything about it is low-key.

quiet unlock noise, small upper-right hand logo for trophy notification, and so far, they're all pretty hard. i think the balance of achivements is lacking, but again, this is only one games' impression worth, so take it with a grain of salt.

*bing!*

JD

we're out of beta, we're releasing on time (ds download)

someone made an oh-so-delectable version of portal for the ds which is not only fun and intuitive to play with the stylus controls, but also supports customizable maps.

download the game and the map editor here.

it's called still alive ds and you can catch me playing it on the bus and subway from now until motion sickness kicks in.

still alive (mostly),

JD

edit: you will need some way to mount this little bit of software to your ds, like an R4 or something like that. just don't go using it for pirating ds games! i'm sure they're all worth $40...

and the hits keep coming

a lot of people say there are three main stresses in life (not including children).

- Moving House
- Getting Married
- Changing Jobs

i think they should add maybe one more.

- Helping someone cope with changing jobs

if you haven't guessed already, jen is going through the top three, and me the top two and my suggested fourth.

we signed our lease monday night, so it's official, we are vacating the basement apartment that has caused us so much grief (mold, leaks, non-sealed windows for prime allergy attacks) but was so cheap, and moving on up to the southside.

it's certainly not a deluxe apartment in the sky, but it does have a private deck, which is rad. i'm definitely going to be getting my bbq on.

the wedding is coming up at an alarming rate, which really just means, oh shit, that's less than two months away, SNAP!

i'm not fearing it, or even sweating it, it's just odd that it's actually happening, kind of like how both gta iv and metal gear solid iv actually came out this year. bizzaro.

so really, right now, with jen moving from the cbc to the toronto star, and with a move planned for july 12, and a wedding for august 3rd, things are starting to heat up for us.

just hope everything goes as planned...

sweating the small stuff,

JD

what i did over the weekend

pac-man shoes = win.

JD

more updates to follow

i know i've been lax in my blogging (which i seem to find continual excuses and apologies for) but i've been a busy cat and i intend on ramping it up a bit now.

i have also managed to forget my blackberry today, so any unboxing or box shots of wii fit will have to wait until i have my phone back in my sweaty palms.

looking forward to checking it out tonight, giving my impressions tomorrow, and possibly doing a full GTA IV review for the blog since work farmed that review out to a freelancer.

fitting my wii (god, so many dirty sounding puns are created by this game),

JD

newsy news

well, it happened.

i mean, two things happened to be precise. i guess it was three. aww f-it, i'll just start breaking it down.

1. video game deprevation therapy.

first, i took a week off from gaming. it's not a big deal, but i wasn't getting much sleep, i was getting fairly irritable and my hair was getting long. so i got a haircut, and left my xbox packed up for a full week.

2. dusted off wii.
then came the re-awakening of my interest in the wii.

it was just boom boom boom, with mario kart wii being actually a fun online wii game (go figure!), then boom blox with it's physics-based awesomeness and now i'm sitting beside an un-opened copy of wii fit.

i think i pissed off some people today, though, because i didn't pre-order it and i guess people were turned away in the morning at my local eb because they had no pre-orders.

i walked in at 11:45 and the manager (whom i've gotten to know) grabbed one for me. i mentioned my lack of pre-order (which is unlike me for big release games that i'm not sure i'll be getting) and she hesitated for a second and then said 'it's cool' and sold me one of her three non-pre-ordered copies.

rad.

jen will be chuffed.

3. playstation whatnow?

oh, and three, i'm breaking down and getting a ps3.

you see, they've bundled the larger harddrive, backwards compatible, 80GB version PS3 with a copy of metal gear solid 4 for $500 and i can get it shipped to me.

this means a guaranteed copy of mgs4 without having to worry about konami or lines and i can get a ps3 that will play ps2 games all for a not too steep price.

i will now be a three console giant who answers to no man, but still answers to one woman.

peace be the journey,

JD

ranting: this is why games (and movies) get a bad rep

i know i've spoken out about this before, but this weekend, i was given a whole lot more fuel for my fire on parents (and retail stores) responsibility for children's media consumption.

that's a fancy way of saying, wtf parents?


hmv

jesus. with all the media coverage around gta iv, you'd think that hmv would have some sort of a talk with their employers to watch out for kids when selling the game. but no, that would be too easy.

the whole reason that people still listen to wingnuts like jack thompson is that kids are still able to (easily) get the game.

i was in hmv on friday, picking up a copy of the new kooks album, and i look to my left to see a male employee of the scarborough town centre location, not only selling the game to an obvious minor (under 5 ft tall, and looking to be around 12 years old, no adult accompaniment) but also discussing the finer points of the game. namely, how realistic the driving and gunplay are.

for god's sakes. when i go to such lengths telling people the merits of the great story in the game, and how it's intended for adults, which is why it's given the 18+ mature rating by the esrb, it pisses me off that people go and ruin it for everyone by pulling this kind of crap.

going to the movies

when i finally calmed down from seeing this spectacle, i went on to have a decent weekend.

but then, when jen and i were out shopping on saturday, we decided to go catch a flick at the mall. we went to harold and kumar escape from guantanamo bay.

now, this is not a kids movie.

i don't want to say it's not funny, or a good movie, but seriously: nine year olds should not be there. there was lots of drug consumption, a hefty portion of nudity (male and female, tops and bottoms) and while it's all in the name of jokes, there is a reason the movie is rated r in the states.

but, not only was there a dad who took his 9 year old son to the movie, but some woman in our row had a god-damned baby in the theater! what?!?!? she had a car seat propped up in one of the theater chairs.

now, not to mention the content of the flick, but isn't it really bad for a baby's hearing to be in a really loud movie theater? aren't their ears still developing at that stage and super fragile?

this weekend i was supremely disappointed by the human race and if you work at a games (or music) store and sell to minors or are a parent who doesn't take your kid to age appropriate movies or give them age appropriate video games, shame on you.

what's at stake: kids staying kids and adults getting adult content easily

seriously, you're just making it harder for of-age people to keep getting the things they want without a hassle. by being bad parents and lazy employees, you're making it harder to make and distribute interesting, envelope pushing entertainment.

and to boot, your kids are missing out on the best parts of childhood, innocence.

i know it sounds cliche, but games like GTA and movies like harold and kumar are so much better consumed when you've got a bit of maturity life experience under your belt.

and in the end, all we'll get is a homogenization of our culture because politicians and crazed parents will think that they have to save children since no one else will. and to me, that's crap.

parent your own children so that the government won't try to do it for you.

and hmv, read the esrb labels, understand them and follow them. it's really simple, you just have to believe that you can still make enough sales without a 12 year olds allowance. suggest another game, something that won't get you in trouble for selling.

/rant

JD

now how am i going to divide my time? (mario kart wii)

and here is a box open image of the statue of happiness (from gta iv) that rockstar sent, unboxed...


and i'm out, because i have a lot of playing, writing and whatnot left to do,

seriously, no joke here, got to get my work on,

JD

i'm being bribed (and i love it!)

much like my new xbox friend, brian crecente, i received not only a copy of gta iv from rockstar games (who up until this point, i didn't think i would get anything from), i also got neat reviewer prizes!

i call them reviewer prizes, because editorial perks, giveaways and all other descriptions seem lame.

i prefer to think of them as prizes. that way, i win.

i got two copies of the game (one on 360 and one on ps3) as well a miniature of liberty city's own statue of happiness...


and a bunch of wicked cool stickers for my bike!

i don't actually have a bike and i don't want to let my tone fool you, these are actually really sweet and i'm so excited to add them to my already large pile of gta iv stuff that came with my collector's edition.

livin' large and in charge (of his cubicle),

JD

p.s. many apologies for all the kotaku links but the unboxing pics from luke plunkett were so good, i don't think i could do any better.

gta iv is... (a quick explanation for media exposed peoples)

great.

i know you'll read everywhere that it's great, but seriously. g-r-e-a-t.

and for anyone who doesn't get gta, here it is in a nutshell:

take your favorite mob/gangster flick (the departed, goodfellas, casino, basically anything scorsese) and make it interactive.

it's not a murder simulator. it's like a choose your own adventure. you play the game to progress the plot. i mean, as a former teenage male, and as a current early twenties guy, i can identify with the sheer glee associated with destruction and violence but at it's heart, the main appeal of gta has and always will be the underworld of crime, gangs and the story of one man.

just an fyi for your internets,

JD

what's wrong with this picture (actually, it's a screengrab...)

ok, ok. i get planet earth. and i can tolerate young indiana jones. heck, i like juno and dexter.

but 27 dresses? joey!?!??!!?

seriously canadians. we need a culture infusion in our tv purchasing decisions, badly.

/rant

JD